


as the city rouses

by tkreyesevandiaz



Category: 9-1-1 (TV)
Genre: Anxious Evan "Buck" Buckley, Boys In Love, Caring Eddie Diaz (9-1-1 TV), Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Excessive Use of Flowery Words, M/M, Morning Cuddles, Poetic, Soft Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz, Sunrises, Worried Eddie Diaz
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-21
Updated: 2020-12-21
Packaged: 2021-03-10 20:32:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28213215
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tkreyesevandiaz/pseuds/tkreyesevandiaz
Summary: As the city rouses, Buck watches.
Relationships: Evan "Buck" Buckley/Eddie Diaz
Comments: 38
Kudos: 162





	as the city rouses

**Author's Note:**

  * For [woodchoc_magnum](https://archiveofourown.org/users/woodchoc_magnum/gifts).



> Hehe another sprint work xD Thank you for all the love on yesterday's! :D
> 
> Will I ever post at an appropriate time? no. But does this time difference means Felicity can help me? Of course it does, so...this is for you! <3
> 
> TW FOR THIS WORK: there is a dialogue to confirm that a character was not thinking of suicide, _but there are no allusions to suicide anywhere in this fic._ Still, if this work is not for you, please don't read it!
> 
> Stay safe, loves!

Mornings are still.

The world is quiet where he sits, alone on the rooftop of his building. He’s wrapped in a blanket and a thin shirt, sitting on a bench where he can see the sun peek out from the clouds in an array of brilliance.

There’s not much of this quiet, Buck’s beginning to realize. They live in a chaotic world, and being on the frontline for most of it leaves him no opportunity to bask in silence. He can count on his hands the number of times he’s been allowed these moments of silence and peace in the past five years he’s lived in LA.

Part of him knows that what keeps him up isn’t just the prospect of being the only one awake in a precarious sea of slumber.

He shudders involuntarily at the memory of what had dragged him out of bed in the first place, leaving Eddie asleep next to him. He’d left a hastily scrawled note telling his boyfriend where he was, and made his way up here with nothing but an extra blanket.

The frigid air had jolted him away from fires and collapses, the chill seeping through the bottom of his pants only serving the same role. The blanket gives him a little reprieve from it all, so he can’t complain.

Though the nightmares are far and few in between ever since he and Eddie started dating, they still exist for both of them. Usually, Eddie’s up before Buck is on the nights terror takes hold of him, usually the one to shake him awake. 

But today, they’d both been knackered out from a shift that left them trembling down to their bones. Buck himself was sitting here with a maximum two hours of sleep. Eddie had been sleeping deeply when Buck had reached blindly for his wrist, counting each thump of blood against his partner’s thin skin.

Buck exhales a sharp breath, watching it cloud lightly in front of him before disintegrating into the slow breeze. The sun casts its first rays across the mountains Buck can see in between the buildings standing tall around him.

Here, he feels like the world weighs less on his shoulders. There’s a significance to being so insignificant in this moment. Time goes on, with or without him, and that realization only cements the choice they all make at some point — either they move with it, or let it drown them until they’re nothing but memories.

Buck’s done both. He’s let his mind override all sense of time, has let time and situation drown him until he felt he’d never come up. He’s also set his feet on the pedals of his life, moving forward no matter how slowly or unsurely he may be. He’s turned into wrong corridors, has met the wrong people, but somehow, he’s always made his way back.

Of the two choices, sometimes Buck feels like he’s still stuck in the sticky remnants of time. He still feels that around him is nothing but illusions of people pretending to stay, that it’s only a matter of cutting himself free of sticky strands to realize that they’ve actually left him behind a long time ago.

It’s a cruel image; this much Buck knows.

Regardless, it stays with him as the sun inches forward towards him. He’s still cast in shadow, but he can now hear the city rousing to life, stretching its limbs for a fresh day. Watching the world wake from darkness into the light reminds him of himself at times, too. If the universe can do it...why can't he?

In other ways, Buck feels like sunrises cement the knowledge that with every sun fall, there _is_ a sunrise, no matter how long the night may stretch. He’s been sitting here since four thirty-eight in the morning, patiently waiting for the curve of moonlight to give way to the flare of the sun. He regrets none of the past seventy-eight minutes, because he needs the affirmation that there will be a new day, an opportunity for them to start out with a clean slate.

“Hey,” Eddie’s voice comes from behind him, sure and steady. It’s still too early for him to be out of bed, and Buck turns to look at him, not at all upset over his view of the sun being interrupted. This is Eddie — he shines just as bright, if not more.

With his boyfriend’s presence, a little warmth comes back to Buck’s skin where he’s been sitting patiently under his blanket. Eddie’s clad in one of Buck’s hoodies and the sweatpants he’d gone to bed with, his hair in multiple knots. He can catalogue where sleep has rumpled him with soft kisses, and where Buck has, leaving his own brand of love all over Eddie's pliant skin. He can trace over the pattern of his own fingertips through the silky, dark strands, and almost twitches to do it again.

Buck wants to laugh at the way it sticks out in all different directions, but refrains, not wanting to disturb the stillness around him. Instead, he extends one end of the blanket out for his boyfriend, readily cuddling into Eddie’s side for some of his sleep-warm skin.

They sit quietly as the rays of light take yet another sweeping step towards them. Around them, lights come on in windows, the roar of traffic picks up, and Buck can almost pick up on the hustle of early risers, of those ending a shift this early in the morning.

“You okay?” Eddie asks softly, turning his head to press a soft kiss against Buck’s forehead. He hums his assent, tilting his face into the warm skin of his boyfriend’s neck. There’s a peace here too, with Eddie’s sturdy frame next to him, quiet and steadfast.

His boyfriend’s still pulled in by the allure of sleep, evident from the periodic yawns he keeps stifling, but Buck has been wide awake for hours, his mind jumping circles as the world dreams on without him. With each new thought brought forth by the lasting tendrils of his nightmare, Buck has tried to look for another speckle of good around him.

From where he’s sitting, safe in Eddie’s arms, Buck sees nothing but good right now.

Briefly, he wonders if this dependence is a good thing or not. But then he thinks about all the different ways Eddie keeps him anchored to Earth, the way he gently makes Buck see himself for what he really is, as more than a makeup of his insecurities, and after that it’s not really a question. 

Eddie makes him a better man, and Buck refuses to apologize for that, even to himself.

“Why’d you get out of bed?” Buck speaks for the first time since his boyfriend’s come up here, turning back to look at the burst of orange, yellow and red on the skyline. 

“I heard you get up,” Eddie confesses. “When you didn’t come back, I got worried, so I came to find you.”

Because that’s the type of man he is. Eddie worries, even if there’s nothing anyone can do about it. And Buck loves him for it, because he knows that he’s got one person in his corner even when things go south.

Like they had last night.

He reaches forth for Eddie’s pulse again, pressing lightly on his artery. Eddie doesn’t say anything, only shifts so Buck has better access to him, the other arm wrapping tighter around him. The movement makes the blanket stretch around the breadth of their shoulders, but Buck can’t bring himself to mind.

Not when this proximity, and the prospect of a new day, are the only things keeping him from reflecting the very thing that dragged him up here.

“I started coming up here after the tsunami,” Buck starts. Eddie’s never seen him come up here, and he can sense the curiosity. Yet, Buck also knows that he won’t push for an explanation if he feels like Buck isn’t ready to share it with him. “The height of the building, being away from the pavement, no matter how far we are from the pier, kept me sane on those nights where all I could feel was water crashing over me. Kept me from remembering the feeling of Christopher being ripped from my arms.”

Eddie stays quiet, but presses another kiss against the top of Buck’s head, right in the mass of curls that have come loose from sleep. The affection encourages him further, and it’s all Buck can do to stop himself from burrowing as tight as he can against his boyfriend’s chest.

“The day you came...with Christopher...I didn’t think I’d ever see the kid again. I didn’t trust myself around him anymore, and you...you just waltzed right past me like nothing had ever happened. And I’d been sitting just like this, only at my kitchen table, watching the sun flicker around the empty walls. I almost didn't believe you were standing in my apartment until you left and Chris was still there.

“A few days later...I found out that there was a rooftop that was accessible for residents. They don’t make a huge deal of it, but it’s here, it has a bench and it’s a place where I can see around me in all directions, keep myself here and not anywhere else,” he explains in a low voice. “Slowly, I started coming up here after most of my nightmares. The cold brings me back to myself.”

“That’s what woke you up today,” Eddie says, pulling away to look Buck in the eye. “Why didn’t you just wake me up?”

Buck now knows that Eddie _had_ been awake, but had been giving him his space. “I just...I needed to come up here for a minute. The sunrise is another thing I usually wait for. It lets me know we have another day.”

Eddie tilts his forehead onto Buck’s, kissing him softly. He tastes like love and toothpaste, and Buck smiles a little at the reminder of his boyfriend’s quirks. “I’m sorry I scared you, yesterday.”

He doesn’t want to talk about, doesn’t want to talk about losing comms with Eddie in the middle of their rescue. It’d only been three minutes before his partner was standing in front of him, but it had taken another three hours before his hands would even remotely stop shaking.

They exchange another soft kiss before Buck answers. “It’s not your fault the radio stopped working. Just shook me up a little, that’s all. It's not something any of us can help.”

And Eddie gets it, Buck knows he does. This was the price they paid to stay on the same shift after filing their workplace relationship forms. 

Somehow, though, even with the terror from yesterday, in no world would Buck want to be on opposite shifts with Eddie. He’s never trusted anyone on shift with him as much as he’s done Eddie, and Buck knows a large part of that is the intuitive way they’ve gotten to know one another in the past three years.

“Let’s go,” Buck says after a while, wincing when his frozen muscles stretch as he stands. Eddie reaches for his hand as they walk back down, absently rubbing it between both of his. The hustle of the city follows them into the stairwell, abruptly ceasing when the door clangs shut behind them.

Eddie urges him into a warm shower as soon as they step back into the loft, promising Buck he won’t burn breakfast while he’s in there. He complies, letting the hot water seep through his frozen digits, warming his bones. He can feel the familiar ache of cold in his leg, and he spends a few minutes under the stream just massaging the tightness out of it.

When he emerges from the bathroom, Eddie’s sitting on the bed, a towel and a comb in hand, an expectant smile on his face. Buck laughs lightly, but goes to sit between his legs, leaning back into his chest.

He knows this drill; it’s his favourite way to seek comfort, and Eddie knows it. Buck only barely stops himself from doing the human equivalent of purring at the gentle scrape of the towel against his scalp, squeezing dripping water out of the strands. 

“Buck?” Eddie whispers, methodically running the comb carefully through his wet hair. 

“Hmm?”

“All those times you went up there...you never went for anything but to sit there, right?” His voice is soft, an undercurrent of fear outlining his words. It takes Buck a minute to catch what he’s implying but once it sinks, he immediately twists around to face Eddie, wincing as the comb snags. Eddie rubs the spot immediately, the furrow between his brows deepening.

“I promise, nothing else,” he says firmly, pouring every bit of honesty into the words. Not even in his darkest moments has he thought about taking his life, but he can see how Eddie would’ve drawn that conclusion. He’s just confessed that he goes up there after nightmares, when his mind isn’t completely sound, and if the roles were switched, Buck would’ve wanted to make sure too.

“Okay,” Eddie says simply, cupping his jaw. “I just wanted to make sure.”

They settle back into silence after that, broken only by the sweep of the comb through Buck’s hair. Eddie keeps up with the movement, even after all the tangles are gone.

The movement is enough to catch up with his lack of sleep, and cushioned against Eddie’s chest, Buck begins to drift off, completely relaxed where he is, even for sitting at the edge of the bed. But he’s bracketed by Eddie in all the ways that count, and that’s all he really cares about right now.

“Can we take a nap?” Buck asks drowsily, feeling the vibration of Eddie’s laugh against his back. 

“Yeah, we can.” Eddie shifts them until they’re horizontal, wrapping the towel loosely around his head.

Buck stifles a yawn, catching his partner’s hand and trapping it between their bodies. “Put the dad away and just hold me. I’m not gonna get sick.”

His partner only snorts, but complies with the request, wrapping strong limbs around Buck’s frame. He knows he’s safe here, and he gives in to the urge to curl up against his partner, relishing the affection Eddie showers him with.

“Go to sleep, Buck,” he whispers against his temple. “I’m not going anywhere.”

So, as the city rouses, Buck sleeps.

**Author's Note:**

> Hehe I hope you liked it!
> 
> You can find me on Tumblr at [zeethebooknerd](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/zeethebooknerd) or on Twitter at [tkreyesevandiaz](https://twitter.com/tkreyesevandiaz).


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